Christianity is a cheerful religion and brings joy
and peace from heaven to earth. The New Testament opens with the
gospel, that is with the authentic record of the history of all
histories, the glad tidings of salvation through the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ.871871 The Greek word εὐαγγέλιον
which passed into the Latin evangelium, and
through this into modern languages (French, German, Italian, etc.),
means 1st, reward for
good news to the messenger (in Homer); 2d, good news, glad tidings;
3d, glad tidings of
Christ and his salvation (so in the New Test.); 4th, the record of these glad tidings (so
in the headings of the Gospels and in ecclesiastical usage). The Saxon
"gospel," i.e., God’s spell or good spell (from
spellian, to tell), is the nearest idiomatic equivalent
for εὐαγγέλιον. The four canonical Gospels are only
variations of the same theme, a fourfold representation of one and the
same gospel, animated by the same spirit.872872 Irenaeus very properly calls
them τετράμορφον
τὸ
εὐαγγέλιον,
ἑνι
πνεύματι
συνεχόμενον, quadriforme evangelium quod
uno spiritu continetur. Adv. Haer. III.
11, § 8. They are not full
biographies,873873 This is expressly disclaimed in
John 20:30; comp. 21:25 but only memoirs or a selection of
characteristic features of Christ’s life and work as
they struck each Evangelist and best suited his purpose and his class
of readers.874874 Hence Justin Martyr, in his two
"Apologies" (written about 146), calls the Gospels "Memoirs" or
"Memorabilia" (Ἀπομνημονεύματα) of Christ or of the Apostles, in imitation no doubt of
the Memorabilia of Socrates by Xenophon. That Justin means no other
books but our canonical Gospels by theme "Memoirs," which he says were
read in public worship on Sunday, there can be no reasonable doubt. See
especially Dr. Abbot’s Authorship of the Fourth
Gospel, 1880. They are not photographs which give only the
momentary image in a single attitude, but living pictures from repeated
sittings, and reproduce the varied expressions and aspects of
Christ’s person.

The style is natural, unadorned, straightforward,
and objective. Their artless and naïve simplicity resembles
the earliest historic records in the Old Testament, and has its
peculiar and abiding charm for all classes of people and all degrees of
culture. The authors, in noble modesty and self-forgetfulness, suppress
their personal views and feelings, retire in worshipful silence before
their great subject, and strive to set it forth in all its own unaided
power.

The first and fourth Gospels were composed by
apostles and eye-witnesses, Matthew and John; the second and third,
under the influence of Peter and Paul, and by their disciples Mark and
Luke, so as to be indirectly likewise of apostolic origin and canonical
authority. Hence Mark is often called the Gospel of Peter, and Luke the
Gospel of Paul.

The common practical aim of the Evangelists is to
lead the reader to a saving faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised
Messiah and Redeemer of the world.875875John 20:30, 31:ταῦτα δὲ
γέγραπται
ἵνα
πιστεύητε
ὂτι
Ἰησοῦς
ἐστὶν
Χριστός , ὁ
υἱὸς τοῦ
θεοῦ, καὶ
ἵνα
πιστεύοντες
ζεὴν
ἔχητε ἐν
τῷ
ὀνόματι
αύτοῦ.

Common Origin.

The Gospels have their common source in the
personal intercourse of two of the writers with Christ, and in the oral
tradition of the apostles and other eye-witnesses. Plain fishermen of
Galilee could not have drawn such a portrait of Jesus if he had not sat
for it. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus. They did not
create the divine original, but they faithfully preserved and
reproduced it.

The gospel story, being constantly repeated in
public preaching and in private circles, assumed a fixed, stereotyped
form; the more readily, on account of the reverence of the first
disciples for every word of their divine Master. Hence the striking
agreement of the first three, or synoptical Gospels, which, in matter
and form, are only variations of the same theme. Luke used, according
to his own statement, besides the oral tradition, written documents on
certain parts of the life of Jesus, which doubtless appeared early
among the first disciples. The Gospel of Mark, the confidant of Peter,
is a faithful copy of the gospel preached and otherwise communicated by
this apostle; with the use, perhaps, of Hebrew records which Peter may
have made from time to time under the fresh impression of the events
themselves.

Individual Characteristics.

But with all their similarity in matter and style,
each of the Gospels, above all the fourth, has its peculiarities,
answering to the personal character of its author, his special design,
and the circumstances of his readers. The several evangelists present
the infinite fulness of the life and person of Jesus in different
aspects and different relations to mankind; and they complete one
another. The symbolical poesy of the church compares them with the four
rivers of Paradise, and with the four cherubic representatives of the
creation, assigning the man to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to
Luke, and the eagle to John.

The apparent contradictions of these narratives,
when closely examined, sufficiently solve themselves, in all essential
points, and serve only to attest the honesty, impartiality, and
credibility of the authors. At the same time the striking combination
of resemblances and differences stimulates close observation and minute
comparison, and thus impresses the events of the life of Christ more
vividly and deeply upon the mind and heart of the reader than a single
narrative could do. The immense labor of late years in bringing out the
comparative characteristics of the Gospels and in harmonizing their
discrepancies has not been in vain, and has left a stronger conviction
of their independent worth and mutual completeness.

Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark for Romans, Luke for
Greeks, John for advanced Christians; but all are suited for Christians
in every age and nation.876876 This characterization is very
old, and goes back to Gregory Nazianzen, Carmen 33, where he
enumerates the books of the New Test., and says;Ματθεῖος
μὲν
ἔγραψεν
Ἑβραίοις
θαύματα
Χριστοῦ,Μάρκος δ̓
Ἰταλίῃ,
Λουκᾶσ
ἈχαιίδιΠᾶσι
δ’ Ἰωάννης
κήρυξ
μέγας ,
οὐρανοφοίτης. The first Gospel exhibits Jesus of Nazareth as
the Messiah and Lawgiver of the kingdom of heaven who challenges our
obedience; the second Gospel as the mighty conqueror and worker of
miracles who excites our astonishment; the third Gospel as the
sympathizing Friend and Saviour of men who commands our confidence; the
fourth Gospel as the eternal Son of God who became flesh for our
salvation and claims our adoration and worship, that by believing in
him we may have eternal life. The presiding mind which planned this
fourfold gospel and employed the agents without a formal agreement and
in conformity to their talents, tastes, and spheres of usefulness, is
the Spirit of that Lord who is both the Son of Man and the Son of God,
the Saviour of us all.

Time Of Composition.

As to the time of composition, external testimony
and internal evidence which modern critical speculations have not been
able to invalidate, point to the seventh decade of the first century
for the Synoptic Gospels, and to the ninth decade for the Gospel of
John.

The Synoptic Gospels were certainly written before
a.d. 70; for they describe the destruction of
Jerusalem as an event still future, though nigh at hand, and connect it
immediately with the glorious appearing of our Lord, which it was
thought might take place within the generation then living, although no
precise date is fixed anywhere, the Lord himself declaring it to be
unknown even to him. Had the Evangelists written after that terrible
catastrophe, they would naturally have made some allusion to it, or so
arranged the eschatological discourses of our Lord (Matt. 24; Mark 13;
Luke 21) as to enable the reader clearly to discriminate between the
judgment of Jerusalem and the final judgment of the world, as typically
foreshadowed by the former.877877 See on this subject
Fisher’s Beginnings of Christianity, ch. XI.:
"Water marks of Age in the New Test, Histories," pp. 363 sqq.,
especially p. 371.

On the other hand, a considerable number of years
must have elapsed after the resurrection. This is indicated by the fact
that several imperfect attempts at a gospel history had previously been
made (Luke 1:1), and by such a phrase as: "until this day"
(Matt. 27:8; 28:15).

But it is quite impossible to fix the precise year
of composition. The silence of the Epistles is no conclusive argument
that the Synoptists wrote after the death of James, Peter, and
Paul; for there is the same silence in the Acts concerning the Epistles
of Paul, and in the Epistles concerning the Acts. The apostles did not
quote each other’s writings. the only exception is the
reference of Peter to the Epistles of Paul. In the multiplicity of
their labors the Evangelists may have been engaged for several years in
preparing their works until they assumed their present shape. The
composition of a life of Christ now may well employ many years of the
profoundest study.

The Hebrew Matthew was probably composed first;
then Mark; the Greek Matthew and Luke cannot be far apart. If the Acts,
which suddenly break off with Paul’s imprisonment in
Rome (61–63), were written before the death of the
apostle, the third Gospel, which is referred to as "the first treatise"
(Acts
1:1), must have been composed
before a.d. 65 or 64, perhaps, in Caesarea,
where Luke had the best opportunity to gather his material during
Paul’s imprisonment between 58 and 60; but it was
probably not published till a few years afterwards. Whether the later
Synoptists knew and used the earlier will be discussed in the next
section.

John, according to the universal testimony of
antiquity, which is confirmed by internal evidence, wrote his Gospel
last, after the fall of Jerusalem and after the final separation of the
Christians from the Jews. He evidently presupposes the Synoptic Gospels
(although he never refers to them), and omits the eschatological and
many other discourses and miracles, even the institution of the
sacraments, because they were already sufficiently known throughout the
church. But in this case too it is impossible to fix the year of
composition. John carried his Gospel in his heart and memory for many
years and gradually reduced it to writing in his old age, between a.d. 80 and 100; for he lived to the close of the
first century and, perhaps, saw the dawn of the second.

Credibility.

The Gospels make upon every unsophisticated reader
the impression of absolute honesty. They tell the story without
rhetorical embellishment, without any exclamation of surprise or
admiration, without note and comment. They frankly record the
weaknesses and failings of the disciples, including themselves, the
rebukes which their Master administered to them for their carnal
misunderstandings and want of faith, their cowardice and desertion in
the most trying hour, their utter despondency after the crucifixion,
the ambitious request of John and James, the denial of Peter, the
treason of Judas. They dwell even with circumstantial minuteness upon
the great sin of the leader of the Twelve, especially the Gospel of
Mark, who derived his details no doubt from Peter’s
own lips. They conceal nothing, they apologize for nothing, they
exaggerate nothing. Their authors are utterly unconcerned about their
own fame, and withhold their own name; their sole object is to tell the
story of Jesus, which carries its own irresistible force and charm to
the heart of every truth-loving reader. The very discrepancies in minor
details increase confidence and exclude the suspicion of collusion; for
it is a generally acknowledged principle in legal evidence that
circumstantial variation in the testimony of witnesses confirms their
substantial agreement. There is no historical work of ancient times
which carries on its very face such a seal of truthfulness as these
Gospels.

The credibility of the canonical Gospels receives
also negative confirmation from the numerous apocryphal Gospels which
by their immeasurable inferiority and childishness prove the utter
inability of the human imagination, whether orthodox or heterodox, to
produce such a character as the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

No post-apostolic writers could have composed the
canonical Gospels, and the apostles themselves could not have composed
them without the inspiration of the spirit of Christ.

Notes.

1. The Symbolism of the
Gospels. This belongs to the history of Christian poetry and art, but
also to the history of exegesis, and may be briefly mentioned here. It
presents the limited recognition of the individuality of the Gospels
among the fathers and throughout the middle ages.

(1.) The theological use. The cherubic figures
which the prophet saw in his exile on the banks of the Chebar,
symbolize the divine attributes of majesty and strength reflected in
the animal creation; and the winged bulls and lions and the
eagle-beaded men of Assyrian monuments have a similar significance. But
the cherubim were interpreted as prophetic types of the four Gospels as
early as the second century, with some difference in the
application.

Augustin
(De Consens. Evang., Lib. I., c. 6, in Migne’s
ed. of the Opera, tom. III., 1046) assigns the lion to Matthew,
the man to Mark (whom he wrongly regarded as an abbreviator of
Matthew), the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John, because "he soars as
an eagle above the clouds of human infirmity, and gazes on the light of
immutable truth with most keen and steady eyes of the heart." In
another place (Tract. XXXVI. in Joh. Ev., c. 8,
§ 1) Augustin says: "The other three Evangelists walked as
it were on earth with our Lord as man (tamquam cum homine Domino in terra
ambulabant) and said but
little of his divinity. But John, as if he found it oppressive to walk
on earth, opened his treatise, so to speak, with a peal of thunder ....
To the sublimity of this beginning all the rest corresponds, and he
speaks of our Lord’s divinity as no other." He calls
the evangelic quaternion "the fourfold car of the Lord, upon which he
rides throughout the world and subdues the nations to his easy yoke."
Pseudo-Athanasius (Synopsis Script.) assigns the man to Matthew,
the ox to Mark, the lion to Luke. These variations in the application
of the emblems reveal the defects of the analogy. The man might as well
(with Lange) be assigned to Luke’s Gospel of humanity
as the sacrificial ox. But Jerome’s distribution of
the symbols prevailed and was represented in poetry by Sedulius in the
fifth century.

Among recent divines, Bishop
Wordsworth, of Lincoln, who is in full sympathy with the fathers
and all their pious exegetical fancies, has thus eloquently reproduced
the cherubic symbolism (in his Com. on The New
Test., vol. I., p. xli): "The Christian church, looking at the
origin of the Four Gospels, and the attributes which God has in rich
measure been pleased to bestow upon them by his Holy Spirit, found a
prophetic picture of them in the four living cherubim, named from
heavenly knowledge, seen by the prophet Ezekiel at the river of Chebar.
Like them the Gospels are four in number; like them they are the
chariot of God, who sitteth between the cherubim; like them they
bear him on a winged throne into all lands; like them they move
wherever the Spirit guides them; like them they are marvellously joined
together, intertwined with coincidences and differences: wing
interwoven with wing, and wheel interwoven with wheel; like them they
are full of eyes, and sparkle with heavenly light; like them they sweep
from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, and fly with
lightning’s speed and with the noise of many waters.
Their sound is gone out into all lands, and the words to the end of
the world." Among German divines, Dr. Lange is the most ingenious
expounder of this symbolism, but he exchanges the symbols of Matthew
and Luke. See his Leben Jesu, I., 156 sqq., and his
Bibelkunde (1881), p. 176.

(2.) The pictorial representations of the four
Evangelists, from the rude beginnings in the catacombs and the mosaics
of the basilicas at Rome and Ravenna to modern times, have been well
described by Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, vol. I,
132–175 (Boston ed., 1865). She distinguishes seven
steps in the progress of Christian art: 1st, the mere fact, the
four scrolls, or books of the Evangelists; 2d, the idea, the
four rivers of salvation flowing from on high to fertilize the whole
earth; 3d, the prophetic symbol, the winged cherub of fourfold
aspect; 4th, the Christian symbol, the four "beasts" (better,
"living creatures") in the Apocalypse, with or without the angel-wings;
5th, the combination of the emblematical animal with the human
form; 6th, the human personages, each of venerable or inspired
aspect, as becomes the teacher and witness, and each attended by the
scriptural emblem—no longer an emblem, but an
attribute—marking his individual vocation and
character; 7th, the human being only, holding his Gospel,
i.e., his version of the teaching and example of Christ.

(3.) Religious poetry gives expression to the same
idea. We find it in Juvencus and Sedulius, and in its perfection in
Adam of St. Victor, the greatest Latin poet of the middle ages (about
1172). He made the Evangelists the subject of two musical poems: "Plausu chorus
laetabundo," and "Jocundare plebs
fidelis." Both are
found in Gautier’s edition (1858), and with a good
English translation by Digby S. Wrangham in The Liturgical Poetry of
Adam of St. Victor, London, 1881, vol, II., pp.
156–169. The first has been well reproduced in English
by Dr. Plumptre (in his Com. on the Synoptists, in
Ellicott’s series, but with the omission of the first
three stanzas). I will quote the third stanza of the first (with
Wrangham’s version):

"

Circa thema generale,

Habet quisque speciale

Styli privilegium:

Quod praesignat in
propheta

Forma pictus sub
discreta

Vultus animalium."

"Though one set of facts is statted,

They by each one are related

In a manner all his own:

This the prophet by four creatures,

Each of different form and features,

Pictures for us, one by one."

In the second poem the following stanzas are the
best:

Formam viri dant Matthaeo,

Quia scripsit sic de Deo,

Sicut descendit ab eo,

Quem plasmavit, homine.

Lucas bos est in figura

Ut praemonstrat in Scriptura,

Hostiarum tangens jura

Legis sub velamine.

Matthew as the man is treated,

Since 'tis he, who hath related,

How from man, by God created,

God did, as a man, descend.

Luke the ox's semmblance weareth,

Since his Gospel first declareth,

As he thence the Law's veil teareth,

Sacrifice' aim and end.

Marcus, lleo per desertum

Clamans, rugit in apertum:

Iter fiat Deo certum,

Mundum cor a crimine.

Sed Johannes, ala bina

Charitatis, aquilina

Forma, fetur in divinaa

Puriori lumine.

Mark, the lion, his voice upraises,

Crying out in desert places:

"Cleanse your hearts from all sin's traces,

For our God a way prepare!"

John, the eagle's feature having,

Earth on love's twain pinions leaving,

Soars aloft, God's truth perceiving

In light's purer atmosphere.

Ecce forma bestialis

Quam Scriptura prophetalis

Notat, sed materialis

Haec est impositio.

Currunt rotis, volant alis;

Inest sensus spiuritalis;

Rota gressus est aequalis,

Ala contemplatio.

Thus the Thus the forms of brute creation

Prophets in their revelation

Use; but in their application

All their sacred lessons bring.

Mystic meaning underlieth

Wheels that run, or wing that flieth

One consent the first implieth,

Contemplation means the wing.

Quatuor decribunt isti

Quadriformes actus Christi:

Et figurant, ut audisti,

Quisque sua formula.

Natus homo declaratur

Vitulus sacrificatur,

Leo mortem depraedatur,

Et ascendit aquila.

These four writers, in portraying

Christ, his fourfold acts displaying.

Show him – thou hast heard the
saying –

Each of them distinctively;

Man – of woman generated;

Ox – in offering dedicated;

Lion – having death defeated;

Eagle – mounting to the sky.

Paradisus lis regature,

Viret, floret, foecundatur,

His abundat, his laetatur

Quatuor fluminibus:

Fons est Christus, hi aunt rivi,

Fons est altus, hi proclivi,

Ut saporem fontis vivi
Ministrent fidelibus.

These four streams, through Eden flowing,

Moisture, verdure, still bestowing,

Make the flowers and fruit there growing

In rich plenty kaugh and sing

Christ the cource, these streams forth
sending;

High the source, these downward trending;

That they thus a taste transcending

Of life's fount to saints may bring.

Horum rivo debriatis

Sitis crescat caritatis,

Ut de fonte pietatis

Satiemur plenius.

Horum trabat nos doctrina

Vitiorum de sentinâ,

Sicque ducat ad divina

Ab imo superius.

At their stream inebriated,

Be our love's thirst aggravated,

More completely to be sated

At a holier love's full fount!

May the doctrine they provide us

Draw us from sin's slough beside us,

An to things divine thus guide us,

As from earth we upward mount!

II. The Credibility of the Gospels would never
have been denied if it were not for the philosophical and dogmatic
skepticism which desires to get rid of the supernatural and miraculous
at any price. It impresses itself upon men of the highest culture as
well as upon the unlearned reader. The striking testimony of Rousseau
is well known and need not be repeated. I will quote only from two
great writers who were by no means biased in favor of orthodoxy. Dr.
W. E. Channing, the
distinguished leader of American Unitarianism, says (with reference to
the Strauss and Parker skepticism): "I know no histories to be compared
with the Gospels in marks of truth, in pregnancy of meaning, in
quickening power." ... "As to his [Christ’s]
biographers, they speak for themselves. Never were more simple and
honest ones. They show us that none in connection with Christ would
give any aid to his conception, for they do not receive it .... The
Gospels are to me their own evidence. They are the simple records of a
being who could not have been invented, and the miraculous and more
common parts of his life so hang together, are so permeated by the same
spirit, are so plainly outgoings of one and the same man, that I see
not how we can admit one without the other." See
Channing’s Memoir by his nephew, tenth ed.,
Boston, 1874 Vol. II., pp. 431, 434, 436. The testimony of Goethe will have with many still greater weight. He
recognized in the Gospels the highest manifestation of the Divine which
ever appeared in this world, and the summit of moral culture beyond
which the human mind can never rise, however much it may progress in
any other direction. "Ich halte die
Evangelien," he says, "für
durchaus ächt; denn es ist in ihnen der Abglanz einer Hoheit
wirksam, die von der Person Christi ausging: die ist
qöttlicher Art, wie nur je auf Erden das
Göttliche erschienen ist." (Gespräche mit Eckermann, III., 371.)
Shortly before his death he said to the same friend: "Wir wissen gar
nicht, was wir Luther’n und der Reformation zu danken
haben. Mag die geistige Cultur immer Fortschreiten, mögen
die Naturwissenschaften in immer breiterer Ausdehnung und Tiefe wachsen
und der menschliche Geist sick erweitern wie er will: über
die Hoheit und sittliche Cultur des Christenthums, wie es in den
Evangelien leuchtet, wird er nicht hinauskommen." And such Gospels Strauss and Renan
would fain make us believe to be poetic fictions of illiterate
Galilaeans! This would be the most incredible miracle of all.

871 The Greek word εὐαγγέλιον
which passed into the Latin evangelium, and
through this into modern languages (French, German, Italian, etc.),
means 1st, reward for
good news to the messenger (in Homer); 2d, good news, glad tidings;
3d, glad tidings of
Christ and his salvation (so in the New Test.); 4th, the record of these glad tidings (so
in the headings of the Gospels and in ecclesiastical usage). The Saxon
"gospel," i.e., God’s spell or good spell (from
spellian, to tell), is the nearest idiomatic equivalent
for εὐαγγέλιον.

874 Hence Justin Martyr, in his two
"Apologies" (written about 146), calls the Gospels "Memoirs" or
"Memorabilia" (Ἀπομνημονεύματα) of Christ or of the Apostles, in imitation no doubt of
the Memorabilia of Socrates by Xenophon. That Justin means no other
books but our canonical Gospels by theme "Memoirs," which he says were
read in public worship on Sunday, there can be no reasonable doubt. See
especially Dr. Abbot’s Authorship of the Fourth
Gospel, 1880.

876 This characterization is very
old, and goes back to Gregory Nazianzen, Carmen 33, where he
enumerates the books of the New Test., and says;Ματθεῖος
μὲν
ἔγραψεν
Ἑβραίοις
θαύματα
Χριστοῦ,Μάρκος δ̓
Ἰταλίῃ,
Λουκᾶσ
ἈχαιίδιΠᾶσι
δ’ Ἰωάννης
κήρυξ
μέγας ,
οὐρανοφοίτης.

877 See on this subject
Fisher’s Beginnings of Christianity, ch. XI.:
"Water marks of Age in the New Test, Histories," pp. 363 sqq.,
especially p. 371.